Review by Booklist Review
Landvik's roman à clef about her ancillary career as a stand-up comedian follows Korean American Candy Pekkala, who, from childhood, has always used her quick-with-the-quips wit to defuse painful situations. Though psychically scarred by the death of her Korean mother when Candy was only five and emotionally wary from the distance the death created between Candy and her ex-GI father, she hones her comic chops as much as she can in small-town Minnesota. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to live in Los Angeles brings Candy to one of Hollywood's most historic apartment buildings, whose been-there, done-that residents expose her to a world that leads to her arriving at the famed Comedy Store's doorstep. Success comes relatively quickly to the sharp-tongued slip of a girl, whose nightly improvisational put-downs earn her a loyal audience. Filled with historical lore about Hollywood's glory days, inside observations about the chauvinism that pervades the comedy boys' club, and a bevy of secondary characters straight out of central casting, Landvik's homage to funny ladies everywhere is a joyful, breezy trip down memory lane.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Landvikplaywright, actor and author of comic novelsdelivers a semiautobiographical tale about a young woman who follows her showbiz dreams in 1970s Hollywood.Candy Pekkalahalf Korean, half Norwegian but all Minnesotanhas a college degree and no idea what comes next. When she's offered the sublet of her cousin's Hollywood digs, Candy moves to LA and Peyton Hall, a storied apartment building that once housed movie stars and is in some ways the real star of the novel. The current residents are less illustrious: Madame Pepper, a clairvoyant who advised old Hollywood; Ed, a substitute teacher who's won a fortune on game shows; Maeve, the bodybuilding daughter of a TV soap star; Francis, the long-ago proprietor of LA's ritziest nightclub. Peyton Hall's aura inspires Candy to follow her long-buried ambition to give stand-up comedy a try. As she hones her act, Candy gets the kind of temp work found only in LA: stints at a record label and a literary agency; and a job labeling VHS tapes at a stand-in for the Playboy mansion. All this glitz and all the new friends she makes under the night-blooming jasmine transform Candywho was a lonely child and drug-addled teeninto a confident young woman who can take her late mother's advice that it's best to laugh. Though Landvik offers an amiable stroll through Candy's growing success, not everything works; a heavy reliance on diary entries and clunky comedy passages detract from an otherwise pleasant portrait of the quirky residents of a since-demolished Hollywood landmark. Landvik's novel is happily filled with a double dose of nostalgiathe protagonist's for the golden age of Hollywood and the author's for a lovably gritty 1970s Los Angeles. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
